After 42 volumes of an original manga, eight seasons of an anime, three spin-off mangas, four feature films, five video games, and one more spin-off anime, My Hero Academia has finally closed the book on the mainline series. Since 2018, developer Byking Inc. have been behind the Justice series of fighting games for the popular anime, allowing fans to relive and experience key story moments from the anime in larger than life battles via teams of two or more.
This time around, All’s Justice’s main theme surrounds itself with the final season of one of the biggest Shonen anime in the last decade. That means quirks flying left and right, villains fighting literal children, and earning lots of… collectibles? Where there’s ups from the anime, there’s areas where the games adaptation doesn’t do a meaningful series much justice.
When you think about anime fighting games, beating up the main antagonist and playing as your favorite characters probably come to mind. All’s Justice repeats the formula of adapting the anime’s story into a fighting game while adding other modes, only this time in an open world-style main hub as opposed to limiting you to scrolling through menus. After hitting start, you’re immediately sent straight into a tutorial through the story mode and scrapping with Shigaraki.
That means every fight, character death, character send off, story arc, and the story for My Hero Academia gets retold almost one-to-one. If you haven’t finished the series through either the manga or anime, all of that will be spoiled for you since it mainly covers the tail end seventh season as well as the eighth season.
But an arena fighter based on a hit anime can’t have only a story mode, can it? This is where an abundance of modes and collectibles come into play. On the outside, this sounds like one of those “Nice to haves.” However, after several hours with All’s Justice, you begin to question if these extra modes are needed or if they’re added filler so the player doesn’t run out of things to do right away.
After the tutorial, you meet with Aizawa at the “Main Stage,” which appears to be a downtown area in the MHA universe. He tells you to find All Might to explain how to use Deku’s smartphone to select what mode you’d like to play, briefly goes through the “Tutorial” section, and then you’re free to roam wherever and play whatever mode next. This is where I realized the developers went full open world to let players feel more immersed while playing other modes at their own pace. This works simply for the fact that the series isn’t the best at distinguishing locations and usually has to tell you where they’re at, making it easy for any generic city area to work with My Hero. Naruto has the Hidden Leaf Village, Your Name has an iconic set of stairs. Hell, Jujutsu Kaisen has the breakup of KFC and Shibuya Crossing. MHA mainly has classrooms and crumbled buildings–pretty generic.
When it comes to the game’s combat, move sets are practically the same for each character and learning how to play most of the roster won’t be too complicated since there’s no quarter circle inputs here. No quirk is exactly like another quirk and the combat feels fun and unique to each individual quirk holder. The game does a decent job on utilizing everyone’s power, almost like giving them their own fighting style, but still using the same buttons to fight as the other characters. Some combos have projectiles, like Ochaco’s float, some have a special grab command, like Deku’s Blackwhip (a grab command), and others you just hit them really hard.
The battle system is easy to understand because it follows the same formula every other fighting game does–take or receive damage to build meter, use meter for special Plus Ultra moves, and swap fighters for other teammates when needed. Something to note in All’s Justice is the Rising Meter and its counters. Learning counters is going to help you not die within seconds of starting a match or be your saving grace near the end of one. They’re well animated and epic to watch since it allows you to land several hits, getting you closer to a win if on the brink of death.
Next come our move types. You have Normal moves and specialRisingmoves you can activate after filling the Rising gauge, which make your selected party member faster and deal higher damage when using their quirk abilities. I would be mindful of who you choose on Rising mode due to the fact you’re unable to switch characters and it lasts for a hot minute. I found this addition useful because it helps when you’re getting totally wrecked you still have some backup to bring momentum back to you. Not to mention making it fun to see “Season Finale” level of quirk abilities being used while in Rising.
Unfortunately, my issues began to show themselves as I went into Story mode. Since brawls in the manga can sometimes be all over the place, like some interrupting others or starting in the midst of one, Story mode is split into a bracket outline. Players start by progressing the main plot until it locks them out and forces them to continue other plot points. These let you choose what battle to follow through without any interruptions and at your own pace. And having so many battles you get to play as other heroes and villains, which is nice because all these heroes deserve a spotlight. This all sounds great, doesn’t it?
The great thing about making some 3D anime games is that usually the art style translates well since they’re drawings. With Horikoshi’s big and over exaggerated character design that comes with his art style, it looks great as a video game. Which leaves me confused as to why you experience moments from the anime as slideshows. At the start of every fight, screenshots taken from the anime play with a voice over and the current situation is summarized via text and read to you by Present Mic.
All this being summarized and the lack of recreating important scenes in 3D for a game feels very cheap and rushed. Watching these stills definitely isn’t as exciting and them being as brief as they are, they probably could have been animated. The anime ended in January, so I understand deadlines need to be met, but it feels like this needed more time to develop to give it more of a “Final Showdown” feel. MHA is filled with emotional scenes that just weren’t conveyed as well because 90 percent of the anime isn’t recreated. The weight of these scenes felt likewatered down, rushed versions because most times they just abruptly ended. The entire time I was thinking, “if I wanted to look at images straight from the anime, I would open the Crunchyroll app instead.”
My biggest issue that lessens the experience of some pretty enjoyable combat are the battle stages. It’s understandable to have repeating locations due to the fact several heroes are fighting the same villain at the same time. However, you’re given barely enough space to move around, making it difficult to maneuver or dodge your opponent while they’re wailing on you. You especially feel the limited space in 1v3 fights, on top of lack of freedom to move. In addition to this, so many fights in the story mode are randomly unbalanced for no reason. Specifically All For One’s fights feel so unfair with him spamming projectiles, even with a team of three. Not only does he get stronger from then on, tack on the lack of room to even move and you’re in for a not so Plus Ultra time.
One method All’s Justice does to fill you in on the story is at the start of every fight. You hear a long run of dialogue to explain the situation, either someone from your team, a villain, or a bystander. So when a fight begins someone begins to talk, and they go on, and on, and on, and it can be… distracting. Doing Plus Ultra move sets doesn’t cancel them out either, so in my game, instead of hearing the Super performed, I continued hearing someone banter. The worse part of this is if you have to restart the match you get to hear it all over again. While I do enjoy the dub for MHA, this did cause me to switch to the Japanese audio. But that meant I couldn’t read what was being said because I’m too focused on not getting pummeled by 10,000 hands. It made this part of the experience as one part slideshows and the other part talking your ears off.
Other modes and features include Team Up Missions, Archives Battle, Character Memory, which are decent additions that do add a bunch of things to do that feel like you’re getting a full game experience. For me, the Team Up Missions felt the most engaging, having original interactions and conversations with other characters that suit the Heroic theme of the series. Some missions felt a bit hollow as many of them were simply gathering information quests or had you show up somewhere to beat up a random villain.
With Archives Battle mode, it lets you relive key moments all the way from season one if you’re needing to refresh your memory on previous story beats. While I found this to be fun, I’m not one to revisit previous fights, but I do think it’s a great inclusion since the games main focus is all about the Final Season and a lot happens between the first through eighth seasons.
The last mode I’ll talk about is Character Memory, which gives more of those slice of life moments we didn’t quite get in the anime. At this cafe location, Deku can use his phone to call other students to join him for a cheerful interaction and lets you play through brief school adventures as your friends. Unlocking more characters means you have to complete more Team Up Missions, so you’re able to fill a whole table depending on how many missions are cleared. I lived for this mode, and couldn’t help but notice just how much there is to collect when it comes to background music and cafe display cards. Fans will be able to easily collect goodies as they progress through the game, but it made me think how much more effort was put into these collectables rather than the extra side stories themselves.
All this said, MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice had a lot of potential with opportunities to make the game spectacle worth the price of admission, but it just doesn’t get there. Endgame fights are bogged down because of poor stage design, cute character interactions feel like padding, and the biggest offender is the fact that nothing is recreated from the anime and the once powerful storytelling often came off flat even when they were animated.
On one hand, I really enjoyed my time with this. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’d be able to recommend this if it wasn’t a game based on one of my favorite anime. It’s definitely for the diehard fans that know the source material and have been keeping up with the series for years. If it weren’t for some of the balancing issues, I wouldn’t have minded some of the painful flaws. Sadly here, if you remove one issue, another two grow in its place. ByKing should be proud of translating such a stylized series for as long as they have, but the $60 asking price for the base game makes this a difficult recommendation event for the most hardcore fans, so if they really wanted to buy it, I’d wait for a sale.
I really enjoyed my time with this. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’d be able to recommend this if it wasn’t a game based on one of my favorite anime. It’s definitely for the diehard fans that know the source material and have been keeping up with the series for years. If it weren’t for some of the balancing issues, I wouldn’t have minded some of the painful flaws. Sadly here, if you remove one issue, another two grow in its place.
After 42 volumes of an original manga, eight seasons of an anime, three spin-off mangas, four feature films, five video games, and one more spin-off anime, My Hero Academia has finally closed the book on the mainline series. Since 2018, developer Byking Inc. have been behind the Justice series of fighting games for the popular anime, allowing fans to relive and experience key story moments from the anime in larger than life battles via teams of two or more.
This time around, All’s Justice’s main theme surrounds itself with the final season of one of the biggest Shonen anime in the last decade. That means quirks flying left and right, villains fighting literal children, and earning lots of… collectibles? Where there’s ups from the anime, there’s areas where the games adaptation doesn’t do a meaningful series much justice.
When you think about anime fighting games, beating up the main antagonist and playing as your favorite characters probably come to mind. All’s Justice repeats the formula of adapting the anime’s story into a fighting game while adding other modes, only this time in an open world-style main hub as opposed to limiting you to scrolling through menus. After hitting start, you’re immediately sent straight into a tutorial through the story mode and scrapping with Shigaraki.
That means every fight, character death, character send off, story arc, and the story for My Hero Academia gets retold almost one-to-one. If you haven’t finished the series through either the manga or anime, all of that will be spoiled for you since it mainly covers the tail end seventh season as well as the eighth season.
But an arena fighter based on a hit anime can’t have only a story mode, can it? This is where an abundance of modes and collectibles come into play. On the outside, this sounds like one of those “Nice to haves.” However, after several hours with All’s Justice, you begin to question if these extra modes are needed or if they’re added filler so the player doesn’t run out of things to do right away.
After the tutorial, you meet with Aizawa at the “Main Stage,” which appears to be a downtown area in the MHA universe. He tells you to find All Might to explain how to use Deku’s smartphone to select what mode you’d like to play, briefly goes through the “Tutorial” section, and then you’re free to roam wherever and play whatever mode next. This is where I realized the developers went full open world to let players feel more immersed while playing other modes at their own pace. This works simply for the fact that the series isn’t the best at distinguishing locations and usually has to tell you where they’re at, making it easy for any generic city area to work with My Hero. Naruto has the Hidden Leaf Village, Your Name has an iconic set of stairs. Hell, Jujutsu Kaisen has the breakup of KFC and Shibuya Crossing. MHA mainly has classrooms and crumbled buildings–pretty generic.
When it comes to the game’s combat, move sets are practically the same for each character and learning how to play most of the roster won’t be too complicated since there’s no quarter circle inputs here. No quirk is exactly like another quirk and the combat feels fun and unique to each individual quirk holder. The game does a decent job on utilizing everyone’s power, almost like giving them their own fighting style, but still using the same buttons to fight as the other characters. Some combos have projectiles, like Ochaco’s float, some have a special grab command, like Deku’s Blackwhip (a grab command), and others you just hit them really hard.
The battle system is easy to understand because it follows the same formula every other fighting game does–take or receive damage to build meter, use meter for special Plus Ultra moves, and swap fighters for other teammates when needed. Something to note in All’s Justice is the Rising Meter and its counters. Learning counters is going to help you not die within seconds of starting a match or be your saving grace near the end of one. They’re well animated and epic to watch since it allows you to land several hits, getting you closer to a win if on the brink of death.
Next come our move types. You have Normal moves and specialRisingmoves you can activate after filling the Rising gauge, which make your selected party member faster and deal higher damage when using their quirk abilities. I would be mindful of who you choose on Rising mode due to the fact you’re unable to switch characters and it lasts for a hot minute. I found this addition useful because it helps when you’re getting totally wrecked you still have some backup to bring momentum back to you. Not to mention making it fun to see “Season Finale” level of quirk abilities being used while in Rising.
Unfortunately, my issues began to show themselves as I went into Story mode. Since brawls in the manga can sometimes be all over the place, like some interrupting others or starting in the midst of one, Story mode is split into a bracket outline. Players start by progressing the main plot until it locks them out and forces them to continue other plot points. These let you choose what battle to follow through without any interruptions and at your own pace. And having so many battles you get to play as other heroes and villains, which is nice because all these heroes deserve a spotlight. This all sounds great, doesn’t it?
The great thing about making some 3D anime games is that usually the art style translates well since they’re drawings. With Horikoshi’s big and over exaggerated character design that comes with his art style, it looks great as a video game. Which leaves me confused as to why you experience moments from the anime as slideshows. At the start of every fight, screenshots taken from the anime play with a voice over and the current situation is summarized via text and read to you by Present Mic.
All this being summarized and the lack of recreating important scenes in 3D for a game feels very cheap and rushed. Watching these stills definitely isn’t as exciting and them being as brief as they are, they probably could have been animated. The anime ended in January, so I understand deadlines need to be met, but it feels like this needed more time to develop to give it more of a “Final Showdown” feel. MHA is filled with emotional scenes that just weren’t conveyed as well because 90 percent of the anime isn’t recreated. The weight of these scenes felt likewatered down, rushed versions because most times they just abruptly ended. The entire time I was thinking, “if I wanted to look at images straight from the anime, I would open the Crunchyroll app instead.”
My biggest issue that lessens the experience of some pretty enjoyable combat are the battle stages. It’s understandable to have repeating locations due to the fact several heroes are fighting the same villain at the same time. However, you’re given barely enough space to move around, making it difficult to maneuver or dodge your opponent while they’re wailing on you. You especially feel the limited space in 1v3 fights, on top of lack of freedom to move. In addition to this, so many fights in the story mode are randomly unbalanced for no reason. Specifically All For One’s fights feel so unfair with him spamming projectiles, even with a team of three. Not only does he get stronger from then on, tack on the lack of room to even move and you’re in for a not so Plus Ultra time.
One method All’s Justice does to fill you in on the story is at the start of every fight. You hear a long run of dialogue to explain the situation, either someone from your team, a villain, or a bystander. So when a fight begins someone begins to talk, and they go on, and on, and on, and it can be… distracting. Doing Plus Ultra move sets doesn’t cancel them out either, so in my game, instead of hearing the Super performed, I continued hearing someone banter. The worse part of this is if you have to restart the match you get to hear it all over again. While I do enjoy the dub for MHA, this did cause me to switch to the Japanese audio. But that meant I couldn’t read what was being said because I’m too focused on not getting pummeled by 10,000 hands. It made this part of the experience as one part slideshows and the other part talking your ears off.
Other modes and features include Team Up Missions, Archives Battle, Character Memory, which are decent additions that do add a bunch of things to do that feel like you’re getting a full game experience. For me, the Team Up Missions felt the most engaging, having original interactions and conversations with other characters that suit the Heroic theme of the series. Some missions felt a bit hollow as many of them were simply gathering information quests or had you show up somewhere to beat up a random villain.
With Archives Battle mode, it lets you relive key moments all the way from season one if you’re needing to refresh your memory on previous story beats. While I found this to be fun, I’m not one to revisit previous fights, but I do think it’s a great inclusion since the games main focus is all about the Final Season and a lot happens between the first through eighth seasons.
The last mode I’ll talk about is Character Memory, which gives more of those slice of life moments we didn’t quite get in the anime. At this cafe location, Deku can use his phone to call other students to join him for a cheerful interaction and lets you play through brief school adventures as your friends. Unlocking more characters means you have to complete more Team Up Missions, so you’re able to fill a whole table depending on how many missions are cleared. I lived for this mode, and couldn’t help but notice just how much there is to collect when it comes to background music and cafe display cards. Fans will be able to easily collect goodies as they progress through the game, but it made me think how much more effort was put into these collectables rather than the extra side stories themselves.
All this said, MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice had a lot of potential with opportunities to make the game spectacle worth the price of admission, but it just doesn’t get there. Endgame fights are bogged down because of poor stage design, cute character interactions feel like padding, and the biggest offender is the fact that nothing is recreated from the anime and the once powerful storytelling often came off flat even when they were animated.
On one hand, I really enjoyed my time with this. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’d be able to recommend this if it wasn’t a game based on one of my favorite anime. It’s definitely for the diehard fans that know the source material and have been keeping up with the series for years. If it weren’t for some of the balancing issues, I wouldn’t have minded some of the painful flaws. Sadly here, if you remove one issue, another two grow in its place. ByKing should be proud of translating such a stylized series for as long as they have, but the $60 asking price for the base game makes this a difficult recommendation event for the most hardcore fans, so if they really wanted to buy it, I’d wait for a sale.
by Adriana Rodriguez
